


All Cats Are Black in the Dark

by Asuka Kureru (Askerian)



Series: Bleach daemon AU [1]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Canon-Typical Violence, Daemon Touching, Gen, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-06
Updated: 2019-03-06
Packaged: 2019-11-13 03:05:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18023570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askerian/pseuds/Asuka%20Kureru
Summary: The first time Grimmjow sees Kurosaki Rikuto in full is in Ulquiorra's recordings and all the sneers and put-downs on his tongue suddenly turn to ashes."... They are trash," Ulquiorra is concluding, expressionless and empty."You'd think someone with a panther daemon would be a little more interesting!" Yammy laughs. "All that strutting and bragging, 'look at me, I'm the lone night-killer of the jungle', all for nothing in the end."Inside Grimmjow's guts something goes still, so furious it won't even growl."That ain't a fucking panther," he says with dangerous quiet through the smattering of polite snickers."It's a big cat, it's black, what else is it then?" Yammy replies with a shrug, side-eyeing him with unimpressed bafflement."Nota panther." Grimmjow stands. "And it was real fucking pitiful of the two of you to let them live."





	All Cats Are Black in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> this may likely develop an entire 'verse, because i also have a thing planned for Kon and if i write for Kon then i kinda have left the door open to writing about everybody. >___>

The first time Grimmjow sees Kurosaki Ichigo-and-Rikuto, he knows he will kill them. 

He was already toying with the idea before Ulquiorra even yanked his own eye out for story time -- because he wants to show up Ulquiorra and Yammy, because he wants action, because he is bored to death of the leash on him and the sneers and fucking everything.

Because he can't stand Aizen's motionless, faceless daemon; Gin's living scarf of a fox, never stepping toe off him; Tousen's long-haired hunting dog, haughty and silent as she sticks to his leg, guiding him with her touch. Grimmjow can barely look at any of them without wanting to tear them away from each other and eat the daemons whole. (He's had _fantasies_ about snapping his maw closed on Aizen's motherfucking butterfly. He doesn't even care it's poisonous, he would chew it up, swallow it down and shit it out, and he'd ask for seconds even as he falls down twitching.)

The first time he sees Kurosaki Rikuto in full is in Ulquiorra's recordings and all the sneers and put-downs on his tongue suddenly turn to ashes.

"... He is trash," Ulquiorra is concluding, expressionless and empty like he didn't even eat his own daemon but cut it entirely away instead, threw it off, like he is severed. 

"You'd think someone with a panther daemon would be a little more interesting!" Yammy laughs. "All that strutting and bragging, 'look at me, I'm the lone night-killer of the jungle', all for nothing in the end."

Inside Grimmjow's guts something goes still, so furious it won't even growl.

"That ain't a fucking panther," he says with dangerous quiet through the smattering of polite snickers. 

"It's a big cat, it's black, what else is it then?" Yammy replies with a shrug, side-eyeing him with unimpressed bafflement. 

" _Not_ a panther." Grimmjow stands. "And it was real fucking pitiful of the two of you to let them live."

He's too off-balance for barbed put-downs, for pressing the point he was going to make -- why the fuck would you let a minnow go when you know it could become a shark. He's too angry. 

Around him the crowded-up arrancar whisper, echoing. _'What else is it then?'_

The sleek lines of her long body, of her legs. The lashing, supple tail. The golden eyes. The paws. The heavy head.

The unbroken night-black of her short pelt.

She's not a panther. He doesn't know what she is, but she's not that.

\--

" _Rikuto!_ " Kurosaki Ichigo screams. The not-a-panther roars (the sound is wrong) as she's sent flying across the street. Di Roy and the other shinigami flinch out of the way. Grimmjow doesn't give either of them a glance; he's kicking off after Kurosaki Rikuto.

He lands on her heaving flank knee first. (The fur is unbroken -- no secret rosettes, black-on-black.) She screams, lashes out with all paws. 

The tail whips under his nose. It's tapering and tufted at the end. Not a panther. Not a fucking panther at _all_. 

He knew it. He leans more of his weight into her ribs, hissing. "How the fuck _dare_ you, you _bitch_."

She stares back with her golden panther eyes, shocked and in pain like ( _you're hurting us! Stop, Ja--_ ) god he hates those eyes. He's gonna pluck them out.

He hears screaming, vaguely, when he reaches out his bare hand to touch the not-panther daemon. Like he hasn't eaten them in the thousands; and like this is going to be the worst violation Kurosaki has ever known. Like Grimmjow wouldn't -- how dare she exist, how dare she be whole, how dare she be _fake_.

His fingertips brush eyelashes as they plunge and then teeth clamp down on his whole hand. 

She touched him first. 

It's wet and warm and gross in there (raspy tongue, wake up you useless asshole, stop putting in that nasty product I want to chew on your head) and his hierro means he doesn't pull back out a stump, but barely. His bones creak.

She touched him first. 

She whips around under him and latches on with her front paws and it -- he's touching her and she kicks with both back paws and 

It should feel like a violation, it should feel wrong, the worst thing. It should feel too wrong for her to hold onto him, but she won't release the grip of her jaws, and her front paws pull until he topples onto her long, heavy body.

Hollows eat souls, eat daemons because for one second instead of icy void there is something, someone that almost -- it's wrong but it's _something_. It's repulsive and terrified and fluttering in their clenched teeth to get away but it's alive. It's a heart.

She latches onto him and her claws gather black and red reiatsu and ( _fierce, terrified but my-pride, must-protect._ )

He presses his palm to night fur, the keel of her ribs (her heart beating so hard, soft downy fur hot with heart's blood) and he knows this.

He's lost this.

Kurosaki-the-human tackles him with furious terror off his daemon; they roll. Grimmjow's cero incinerates a path through five rows of houses, instead of living fur and plate-wide paws.

They fight. Two on one. The human with his sword, the daemon with brutal waves of reiatsu. Two on one except they aren't two people and it's more like one on one-half, isn't it. Isn't it. He evades bursts of ice, pulls his sword out and stabs it through flesh in the same movement, two bodies like meat on a single skewer. 

Yanks it free. ( _He wants his he wants he wants her he wants Grie--_ )

" _Grind, P--_ "

Pain. Lights. Darkness. 

\--

When Aizen asks him politely if it was worth losing half his fraccion Grimmjow looks up (forces his head up from the grip Tousen has on his hair) and he sneers, or maybe smiles; "She ain't a panther. Not any kind of jaguar. Not even a _leopard_ either."

He has touched Kurosaki's soul bare-handed and now he knows her marrow-deep. She's protection-family, she's watchfulness as sister-cubs tumble between her paws. She's a queen of all she travels through. She's not silent-alone-deadly. (Not right, not _his_.)

"What is she, then?" Aizen asks him, the black butterfly like a brooch on his collar, not even beating slow, absent wings. And not talking; never, ever talking.

"Dunno," he lies. He can guess; he just doesn't care. 

"Sorry," he lies. "Kinda lost my head a bit there."

He got it out of his system a little, he thinks. If the Kurosakis dare to show up in front of his face again, he'll kill them. But...

Kurosaki Ichigo doesn't have what Grimmjow lost. Grimmjow proved himself that. So whatever.

He loses his arm. He loses the rest of his fraccion -- not to death, just given away. He gains Luppi fucking Antenor.

Whatever.

(When he goes to bed he opens and closes his leftover hand and he lies to himself that the fur-feel he remembers is the right one, not just the most recent.)

\----------------

Rikuto has been touched by human hands before Grimmjow. 

By Ichigo's mother, his sisters. (Never his father, not since he stopped toddling.) Brushed against by some wannabe tough; he threw up afterwards, Ichigo almost felt worse for him than for himself.

Rikuto gets touched after him, too. By Ulquiorra, by Gin. (Just a glancing blow. He was shuddering for an hour.)

Grimmjow's strength and his desire to destroy them was overwhelming. It choked them, froze them silent almost a second too long to react. An avalanche of memories of what it feels like to tear someone's daemon out of them. To swallow. Something that made their inner hollow strain against the chains holding it down, and the prey, human rest of them want to run away and never stop.

The worst thing wasn't the white-hot rage, or the endless hunger. 

The worst thing was the grief.

He expected once they get into Hueco Mundo Grimmjow would find them, finish what he started. He's braced for it, another rush of overwhelming force, hate. But nothing. The Sexta Espada is conspicuously absent.

Then Ulquiorra finds them, pierces through them -- touches Rikuto and it's so cold it leaves third-degree burns on his soul but even as their mind flickers away -- as Rikuto's shape starts flaking off in golden motes, oh, no -- it's just. 

Impersonal. Empty. 

The last thing they see is Ulquiorra leaning down toward Ichigo's lioness, mouth opening like a child grimly approaching peas.

\--

They wake to Inoue's golden soul-light, Natsume's soft black nose snuffling along Rikuto's skull. They wake to a white ceiling and a broken wall, two terrified hollow girls pressed in the corner. Grimmjow sitting sullen on the rubble.

"He'll be back in thirty minutes tops," Grimmjow says as Ichigo sits up. "I suggest you fuck off real fast."

He's gazing at whatever is outside the broken walls, pretending he's not even keeping an eye on Ichigo and Rikuto. 

Ichigo and his daemon glance at each other. 

Look at the Inoues -- "Are you alright?" Rikuto asks softly, and Natsume nods his big okapi head; uh huh, yes, sure. Ichigo notes old blood and dirt on Orihime's white clothes, suspicious tears, but her face and hands are free of real wounds. Probably she healed herself at some point. He... really doesn't like that but. She's fine _now_. 

"Kurosaki-kun," Natsume whispers, and sneaks Grimmjow an anguished look. "He -- he brought you here, he..."

He touched her. Again. Ichigo could have guessed. It's not like he had a forklift in his pocket to carry her with. And it was either carry an unconscious lioness to Inoue or carry a full-grown, _awake_ okapi to Ichigo. He's good with this.

They stand. (They wobble.)

"It's okay, Inoue." They smile. 

They walk to him.

"You say a single word of _thanks_ and I'll shove it back down your gullets with a cero," Grimmjow says, low and raspy.

"We weren't going to," Ichigo lies.

They stand in silence, watching the man as he ignores them like only a feline-souled person can, swinging a foot in lieu of tail.

Then Rikuto steps forward.

Steps up onto pieces of rubble. Rubs her chin on his shoulder. Her cheek. 

Steps back. 

Shock and grief and -- it _hurts_ and it's not fair and _it hurts_ and he -- it. He's wrong and he's empty and they're shoving his face in it with... 

Heavy cat-warmth. Yes, this is satisfactory, this is mine. I accept it.

"... You fucking _bastards_ ," Grimmjow chokes out. Ichigo turns his head away, gazing absently at the hollow girls so he won't have to officially notice the wet glimmer in blue eyes.

"Sorry," Ichigo says lightly, like he doesn't mean it. "You want to fuck off with us?"

"I don't think you get how much I want to tear her out of you," Grimmjow replies, almost musing, and he turns his head to stare at Ichigo.

Reddened scleras, damp corners. So direct, so _intense_ Ichigo almost rocks back on his heels. The physical contact was over almost as soon as it started but somehow he still feels an echo of the man inside him, overpoweringly intense, maddeningly incomplete.

"Grimmjow, you _touched my daemon_. I don't know who else would get it better than I do." He sighs quietly. "I'm not suggesting you stay with us so I can rub her in your face. But don't stay here either. What's left for you?"

"What's left anywhere else," Grimmjow replies with a tired eye roll. "Fuck. It's gonna take me another fifty years just to forget her again. I should kill you just for that."

Ichigo smiles. Grimmjow lifts his fist to punch it off his face, half-seriously.

Then Ulquiorra's sword appears out of his bared chest.

\--

Grimmjow watches from the floor. What he can see of it. Mostly nothing, as Ulquiorra presses the Kurosakis away from the room, and then he's left with the woman and okapi and the two opportunistic bitches.

One of them is all for finishing him off while he's down, talking shit about him selling himself for a feel of Kurosaki's fur. _She's_ a true arrancar, she would never be bought for a _lie_! She doesn't even want her own daemon back anyway, he only held her back.

"I think you wish that were true," Inoue Natsume says, standing between Grimmjow and Loly, four hooves planted and his fake horns tilted forward like he would ever choose to headbutt anything. "I think you wish it very much." 

He calls onto the shields. The woman half of them kneels next to Grimmjow, already haloed in soul particles, the stuff daemons are made of. For a second he wonders if she could reject his right out of his stomach.

He'd probably have to die first. Almost sounds good. But... heh. Nah.

"Didn't ask you," he says when he can sit up. The woman is sweaty, slightly white at the lips. She's been bringing people back from the dead all day, feels like. 

"I know," she replies. Her breath is short. Ulquiorra must have injured him even more than he thought. "You owe me anyways."

"... Mmm." He stands. He doesn't need her to tell him what he owes. He looks at the two arrancar girls, arches an eyebrow. 

"We'll be fine," Inoue Natsume says, hooves still planted firm. The blonde arrancar stares back at the daemon like she thinks he could and would gore and eat her instead. 

Grimmjow goes after Kurosaki.

Room after empty room, broken ceiling, broken roof. 

A hole through the sky. Power pouring through. _Fuck_.

He's just in time to see Ulquiorra punch another hole through the human part of Kurosaki.

A way bigger hole this time around. Oh. Fuck.

Then the panther (no) goes up in golden motes of light, a swirling tornado of soul particles, soul dust, vaguely in the shape of a cat.

Grimmjow makes a noise. A choked, gut-punched kind of noise. 

" _Grind, Pantera_ ," he says almost under his breath. ( _Get 'em, Griet_.)

Ulquiorra was already injured. Grimmjow takes off a wing before the man even knows he's here. Kicks off the air, ricochets right back for the second one. He's not gonna startle Ulquiorra twice. He's as good as dead. (He wants her back, he wants her, soft sleek fur and wicked toothy grins and soul-rightness, completeness; he wants her.)

Then power explodes from the corpse. Grimmjow is flung off-course; he glances off the ceiling once, twice before he can sink in his claws and hunker down against the backlash.

He watches Kurosaki go full hollow. 

Shit. That's a vasto lorde. He _told_ them Kurosaki's growth rate was gonna be a pain. Who's laughing now? 

It opens its maw and breathes in its still-coalescing daemon, swallows every single mote of light that she is -- and howls fit to shake the castle down. It rings in Grimmjow's head -- the warning of a stronger hollow on the hunt for dinner, and the. The feel. The memory -- his first real memory, not a mangled shred inherited from someone he isn't anymore but _his_ , Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez's.

When Griet understood they were lost, understood _he_ was lost and their soul chain was rotten beyond saving and he _would_ consume her.

She'd faced him -- the twisted monster of a basic menos he was turning into. She'd said, "okay." And she had stood on her back legs to give him a panther's hug, all claws and teeth out, to see who would devour who first.

(She'd lost, of course. But so had he.)

He lost. He failed. He watches the vasto lorde beat Ulquiorra around; he doesn't try to run. He doesn't think he wants to run. If it eats him, then --

No. That's suicidal. He ain't that. He's never been. (God, he only just touched Rikuto. He hates Kurosaki for being such a righteous ball of my-pride, my-cubs, the-world-is-mine-to-protect. It's so _tempting_. Such a bright lure. Such a strong trap.)

Then the woman and the quincy show up on the dome. 

"What -- what's that?" the Quincy's snow-white bird on stilts asks no one in particular. Ulquiorra is a torn-up smear on white stones, half his body mangled or lost. 

Predictably the woman tries to go to him.

Predictably the vasto lorde turns on her.

("You want to fuck off with us?" Ichigo asked him not fifteen minutes ago. And no, he doesn't, he doesn't need a pack, a pride, he's fine alone, always been. He couldn't _stand_ living around Kurosaki and seeing the ghost of his daemon from the corner of his eye every time he breathes.)

Kurosaki asked. Now he's dead. Now there's something else with his skin and his hair, something with horns and devouring teeth, something that's not whole, that will never be whole again.

"I'll get you a shot at the mask," he tells the Quincy briskly, appearing behind him on his way. He catches the woman by the hair, the okapi by the tail, and swings them back together out of range. (The okapi is all terror-want-to-run-why-not-peace. Grimmjow curls up his lip; releases him as fast as he can. Repulsive.)

Ulquiorra is spending the last of his life in great gouts of blood, regeneration slowed down to nothing. Grimmjow hops over his almost-corpse, snatches it with his tail, throws it bodily at the vasto lorde. He dodges out of its line of sight during the following explosion. (Ulquiorra snuffs out with his last attack. Ain't how Grimmjow wanted to kill him and wishes he could have fed on him first but who cares now.)

"Is that -- that's Kurosaki, isn't it?" the Quincy yells out, even as Grimmjow is risking his fucking life catching the thing in a headlock, forearm as tight against its throat as he possibly can. It has no hierro. He _can_ choke it. 

The massive sword bites into his flank, cuts at his legs. The vasto lorde is whipping it around trying to get at Grimmjow on its back without cutting itself, but it's not working. Of fucking course not, he's pressed too close. Hurts like a bitch, though, flayed and shredded open. Grimmjow grits his teeth, tucks his chin in to shield his throat.

Sudden, shocking bright pain in his abdomen. He looks down and oh. The vasto lorde stabbed itself through the stomach with Zangetsu. It's piercing just over Grimmjow's hollow hole and coming out of his back. 

Grimmjow doesn't have high speed regeneration. "Crafty bastard," he says, choking, and as the vasto lorde yanks its sword free and starts to turn, he shoves a hand into its hollow hole, all claws and forearm blades out.

It's where Rikuto used to be. It's not the same as touching Rikuto herself, but.

The connection is a town-razing shockwave in his mind, an atomic explosion. 

Devour. _Devour_. Kill. Devour the _world --_

( _protect_ )

"The mask!" he screams as the woman and the Quincy stare dumbly. He's wrist-deep in the vasto lorde's chest cavity but it's not a good anchor point, too much of his arm is out; he'll be shaken off soon. (Devour. Devour. Dev--)

Edrad's massive fist catches the vasto lorde in the side of the head; sends them both flying. Grimmjow's hand comes free. 

He rolls. Nakeem's knee checks him; they both skid back a couple meters. A bare fifteen feet away the vasto lorde shakes its head, climbs back to its feet. "Di Roy!" Nakeem calls out, throwing him bodily. Grimmjow understands nothing. They're gonna die. The fuck are they even doing, getting him out of the way. The _fuck_.

He doesn't let Di Roy run off with him; he heaves out of his grasp, stumbles, faces the mess. 

A golden barrier springs to life around the vasto lorde; an arrow flies. The vasto lorde tilts its head out of the way, breaks free.

Ulquiorra's last Lanza del Relámpago catches it in the forehead, and the mask cracks in two.

"How the _fuck_ were you not dead," Grimmjow chokes out. On Inoue's lap, hair almost brushing Natsume's striped leg, Ulquiorra gives him a bland look, and crumbles right to dust.

... 'Che. Always gotta have the last word. 

Down on one knee, squinting through the dust, Grimmjow tries to see what's going on with the vasto lorde. If it's gonna be as annoyingly durable as Ulquiorra, who was also a vasto lorde with high-speed regeneration, then Grimmjow wants to be braced for it. (His arm's broken, he's pretty sure. His spine is damaged. It's hard not to crumple.) 

His fracción (what's left of them) joins him, standing at his back with tense wariness. Di Roy is swaying a little from proximity with all that power; but it lessens, drip by drip and then in gushing torrents, reishi escaping like water from a broken dam.

Yeah. It's over.

... It's over.

A body, standing. Toppling over. Mask fragments raining down, long hair searing to ash without even a flame. A body on the ground with a hole through its chest full of bleeding slashes and.

A single body. Soulless. Dead.

"... Well, that was fucked up," Di Roy says with his voice still shaking, and both Inoues gag on either tears or vomit but probably both. The Quincy's hands are shaking, his daemon's feathered wings shivering like they want to open but there's nowhere to flee to.

Grimmjow wants to climb back to his feet, but his stomach muscles are done and won't help at all. His hollow hole is washed red from sheeting blood.

It's over. (It's over.)

His resurrección gives out. Blades and armor disappearing, long hair, fangs. Claws. His sword clatters down on the ceiling; Nakeem picks it up silently, holds it out. 

A pulse of power. Grimmjow's hand spasms on Pantera's grip; he turns (it hurts.) The hole in Kurosaki's chest is bubbling closed, golden light escaping from it in a cloud, he's healing, _the vasto lorde's fucking healing again_ \--

The light coalesces into a long, black-furred shape.

Kurosaki Rikuto falls out of the air with absolutely no grace and flops on top of Kurosaki Ichigo like a sack of potatoes.

\----------------------------

When it's all over Ichigo and Rikuto go back home to Karakura, plus a handful of stray arrancar and minus the powers that would let them see any of them.

Sometimes Urahara gives him updates on his research progress, when he asks. He doesn't ask often. It's too often 'well we have found a fiftieth way it won't work!' and awkward topic changes quickly segueing into 'My apologies, Kurosaki-san, I've got to go.'

It's not all bad, anyway. They go back to their normal life, their normal school, their normal fights and gripes about Ichigo's orange-bleached hair and Rikuto's black-dyed fur, what are they, punks? Delinquents? Do they feel special, switching hair colors with each other like this, what showoffs, they should try another detention.

Sometimes in the mornings Karin-and-Manatsu follow something with their eyes that's just a few steps back from Ichigo-and-Rikuto. Sometime when they walk home Chad-and-Amparo nod polite greetings to people neither Ichigo nor Rikuto can see.

It's cool. 

It's lonely, but better -- selfishly, guiltily better -- than if they had other things to do with their time. Ichigo and the arrancars can be bored together. It's cool.

"Hey, Kurosaki, the football club's here for you!"

"Say, Kurosaki, the karate club wondered if..."

"Hey, Kurosaki, the photography club--"

"The _photography club_?

"Not for your _human_. Would you mind lounging, you know, _sinfully_ next to--"

"Oh my god, _no_."

Hell, the arrancars have got to be even more bored than Ichigo and Rikuto are. They don't have part-time jobs and every single athletic school club battling it out for their time with pocket change. Ichigo has no way to know either way, so maybe they don't stay around all the time, maybe they go home to Hueco Mundo sometimes and. Do. ...Things. 

"Maybe they have sandcastle competitions."

Rikuto snorts. It's the end of the school day (another identical day) and Ichigo is putting away their school things in his bag. Rikuto lays in the aisle at the back of the room, too big to find a place on or under his desk like almost every other daemon in the class. (Inoue-the-hooved has already long trotted off with a cheerful wave of his tail; the next biggest after the two of them is some girl's rottweiler and half the time he manages to find a spot under her chair.) 

"Yeah, and maybe they moonbathe in speedos."

"Augh."

He shoulders his bag and she heaves herself up and some dude in basketball clothes bursts in through the doorway, squirrel chittering nervously on his shoulder. "Kurosaki!"

"Auuuugh. No, not today, I've got work--"

"There's another bunch of delinquents looking for you at the school gates!"

"... Oh hell, not _again_."

They reach the courtyard and Chad and Amparo are standing there for some reason, Amparo up on her little back legs with her long weirdass hands joined together like she's wringing them. (Pangolins are just so _hilarious_.) Rikuto flicks her ears in greeting. "Hey, Amparo. Sounds tedious out front, let's go over the back wall."

The look Chad gives Ichigo is a bit fey, a bit amused. "Hm. I don't know if you'll want to do it for these ones."

"Huh?"

" _Yo, Kurosaki! I've come to destroy you!_ "

\-- Oh.

They run. 

They burst through the milling, hesitant crowd and Ichigo and Rikuto instantly know why the students don't want to risk passing too close. 

Four men -- young, but adults, two of them as tall as Chad or almost, so fairly massive for humans (they're bigger in their normal bodies) and a twitchy scrawny guy who looks like he's probably got fifty knives on him, and a dude in front with his hands in pockets and his sculpted shoulders and arms bared by a tanktop in autumn who has all his teeth out.

A black jaguar daemon paces back and forth across the entrance to the yard, long and sinuous, tail tip flicking like she's still deciding who out of the herd of students to bring down like a limping wildebeest.

Ichigo chokes. " _How the entire fuck--_ "

"Oi!" Grimmjow's grin brightens somehow; his back straightens; he's damn well _quivering_. "Hey, bitch. There can be only one. _Go, Leucanthe!_ "

She flies at Rikuto. Grimmjow follows on her heels; he catches Ichigo in the ribs and they roll in the dust. Ichigo is still trying to fit his brain around a hollow with a daemon; thankfully his body reacts without him. He plants both feet in Grimmjow's stomach (no hole?!) and uses their momentum to roll back and fling him off.

Besides them two black shapes keep crashing together, wide paws raking the air and fanged maws snapping like bear traps, trying to catch a grip on tender throats. One of them roars. (Not Rikuto. He can tell; they sound nothing alike.) 

Punches and kicks and clawed swipes. Nose bleeding, lip stinging, head ringing from a temple blow. They go around and around, body blows and fancy high kicks, brutal elbows. 

Ichigo finally manages to catch Grimmjow in a chokehold. Around them is a wide empty circle and then students massed around, staring in shock, preventing a couple of teachers from getting through.

Chad is next to the huge one with the red mohawk; they look like they're commentating.

Still caught around the neck, Grimmjow wriggles down, winds an arm under his knee, sweeps him down on the ground. They both fall hard onto their backs. Spectators hiss in shock; a couple of soccer team members yell actually scared encouragements.

Yeah, there's never been blood in public before with the other punks, eh. Or any fight that lasted more than two minutes.

Ichigo grinds his knuckles into Grimmjow's skull. "That's -- for -- ruining -- _my shirt!_ "

Grimmjow kicks at the air, trying to flip them over -- and then they see their daemons roll by like a tornado ball of black fur only to _flop_ next to them in a pile, blinking mild golden eyes at them like they have no idea why anyone would stare.

Rikuto starts grooming Leucanthe's ear, stern and fussy and very determined. Grimmjow goes loose all at once in Ichigo's grip, and starts laughing his ass off.

"Oh my _god_ ," Ichigo says, choking on his own laughter. "You asshole. I've got bruises on my bruises. On three we gotta get up and run like the wind, okay?"

Grimmjow turns his head to look at him. His skull is still pillowed on Ichigo's biceps. "Hm? What for--"

" _Kuuuurooosaki!_ "

"Three!" Ichigo and Rikuto chorus, and take off like horses out of the gate.

Grimmjow and his daemon (his daemon?!) are not far behind, and neither are the rest of their friends.

"Who are we even running from?!" Grimmjow's scrawny buddy asks five blocks later. He has a fat sausage of a black-and-gold-banded kind of lizard across his shoulders and it's really odd to see his whole face for once. 

"Teachers! Oh man, I'm gonna have detention for a whole week. We're not supposed to fight on school premises." Ichigo rubs at his smarting ribs. 

"That sounds really boring," Scrawny points out as they turn into the street that follows the river and finally slow down. "Why the hell do you still go? You're fucking old!"

"Uh, because -- you know what, never mind, I'll explain modern education later." He steals the rest of them looks. Big Arms Mohawk guy has a baboon, following on the walls and roofs, and Fat _And_ Muscles a wild-looking pig trotting at his heels. (Ichigo knows better than to dismiss pigs. They're smart as hell _and_ they've been known to eat people.)

His eyes keep going back to the black cat ambling next to his Rikuto, though.

The tails aren't the same at _all_. And Rikuto's taller at the shoulder. And something in the lines of their skulls, the length and thickness of their legs and bodies... Side by side, they're really obviously not the same species.

Really obviously pretty close to being the same species, too.

Chad turns to the grass and slides down the slope -- they're almost at their bridge. Ichigo follows; the arrancars shrug and go along with it. 

Finally they're all facing each other and Ichigo is kind of counting the minutes before some well-meaning neighbors calls in suspicious delinquent activity to the cops, but who cares.

"So." He waves at Leucanthe, who's staring at Rikuto and ignoring the rest of them entirely. "How the hell?"

"How else? Urahara."

Chad chuckles silently. Ichigo huffs an annoyed sigh, sits on the grass brusquely, reclining his back against the slope.

Grimmjow sits, too, a couple seconds later, maybe four feet apart.

"We ain't fixed," he says quietly. The grass is too short to let his daemon disappear and stalk, but she's trying it anyway, belly down to the ground as she slowly creeps up on Rikuto. Laying down, back paws stretched to the side, Rikuto watches her right back and makes no move to evade the incoming attack.

"Hm?"

"It's just the gigai. Forces our powers down to real boring levels. Forces daemon-shaped bits of our souls out -- no space for more than one person in one of these babies. And they disappear back in us the second we leave the meat behind."

"Oh." 

"Don't ask me how come all the souls we've eaten don't count. When he starts yapping in scientist I go and catch a nap."

"So you guys aren't... fixed yet, yeah, I see." So they're not _leaving_ yet. Ichigo feels bad for how glad he is.

"Mmh."

Ichigo watches him feel absently at his skull where Ichigo noogied him. He's got a busted cheekbone and the gravelly yard was not kind to his bare arms at all.

"Is she..." 

He hesitates. In the grass Rikuto starts grooming the tufted end of her tail, studiously awkward, ears drooping a little; then she stops, and breathes in, and makes herself look up into her eyes.

"Are you real?" she asks Leucanthe very quietly.

If Ichigo was doubting Leucanthe was a person (he kind of was) he would stop the second she stops in place, and lifts her head from the grass to glare. "Hey, fuck off. I'm real enough to suck your eyes outta your skull and spit them back up your ass, you wanna try?"

Ichigo chokes on a laugh. "Um, we're good."

A stretch of silence -- autumn light, autumn sun slowly going down, and the water flowing endlessly at the end of the grass, murmuring. It's such an oddly nice moment. Peaceful. He's happy. Today, he's happy.

"We're not quite like we were," Grimmjow says, reclined all loose and stretched out against the slope. His eyes are half-closed and he doesn't act like he's cold, even though Ichigo can see prickling hairs on his forearm from here. "Kinda... closer. More squished together, I guess."

"Yeah, you got distracted a few times during our brawl." Ichigo tilts his head, thoughtful. "Seeing through each other's eyes?"

"That too."

It's a thing some people can do, or you can learn through meditation and other types of training, but Ichigo can hear in Grimmjow's voice that he means they're like that all the time, without trying at all.

"Maybe because it's been such a short time. You'll probably get more independent the more it lasts."

"If the only problem I have with getting my daemon back is I sometimes sniff dog shit in technicolor then I really don't care if it never goes away."

Ichigo hugs his knee to his chest to rest his chin on it and smiles against his arm at nothing in particular. He's vaguely aware that he should be going to his part time job now and he is absolutely going to get fired again. Does he care? No. Not one bit.

Leucanthe is so regal. So is Rikuto, of course, except he has seen her upside down with her jowls flapping out as she napped and chasing Kon and Kai on slippery wooden floors going nowhere fast; he can't buy it from her. He wonders, very fast and in a very deeply buried corner of his brain, if Grimmjow would buy 'you touched mine, can I touch yours', or if he would laugh in his face and chuck him ass over teakettle in the back of a garbage truck.

"... Best thing about this gigai is still that now when you're moping on the way back home I can just go ahead and shove you head first down a sewer hole."

Ichigo throws a handful of grass and pebbles at Grimmjow. Grimmjow grins at him all teeth out, and pounces.

(One big difference they learn later as they're trying to reach the ladder to get out of the river first is that jaguars swim a hell of a lot better than lions.)

**Author's Note:**

> everyone in ichigo's life: MELANISTIC LIONS DO NOT EXIIIIIST  
> ichigo: NEITHER DO HUMAN-QUINCY-HOLLOW-SHINIGAMIS so fml for being an impossibility i guess.
> 
> ugh i didn't find anywhere to slip it in during the fic. grimmjow's daemon is leucanthe now because she's not margriet anymore than he's still jack, even though they both remember bits and pieces of being those people.
> 
> Orihime: Okapi  
> Ishida: Great Egret  
> Aizen: Sara Longwing butterfly  
> Gin: arctic fox  
> Tousen: Afghan greyhound  
> Di Roy: Gila monster  
> Edrad: Baboon  
> Nakeem: warthog


End file.
